rube
noun
an unsophisticated person from a rural area; hick.
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rube
1 American
[roob]
/ rub /
noun
Informal.
rubes
plural
Rube
2
American
[roob]
/ rub /
noun
rube
British
/ ruːb /
noun
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of rube
1895–1900; generic use of Rube; compare earlier use of Reuben in same sense
Explanation
Rube is an insulting word for a person considered uneducated or uncultured. Your average country bumpkin is also a rube. Calling someone a rube is another way of saying, "You sound like an idiot and you don't know what you're talking about." This word implies a lack of sophistication, manners, education, and culture. Rubes are usually from rural areas, and they’re also known as bumpkins, hayseeds, hicks, yahoos, yokels, and hillbillies. This is an insulting word, so use it cautiously — though it's probably fine to use it jokingly with your friends.
Vocabulary lists containing rube
Inherit the Wind
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Jonathan Demme (1944-2017) Tribute List
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Water for Elephants
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Old meaning of hick: hayseed, rube, ill-educated person.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 16, 2026
If you have been investing since your 20s, you’re hardly a rube where your portfolio is concerned.
From MarketWatch ● Feb. 12, 2026
Come for the Rube Goldberg machines, leave feeling like a rube.
From Salon ● Feb. 21, 2025
De Shields-Moon quickly found herself buying loads of clothes not to look like a rube in her new hometown.
From Los Angeles Times ● Feb. 8, 2023
As I edged up near him, reaching out for a magazine, he cast a cold, disdainful glance at me like the rube that's wise to the dangers of the great city.
From Miss Maitland Private Secretary by Bonner, Geraldine
This, of course, is an example of a Rube Goldberg machine—an overly complex mechanism that performs a simple task.
From Barron's ● May 14, 2026
After that fall, each bout of sickness or medical procedure causes a cruel chain reaction, like a diabolical Rube Goldberg machine.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 10, 2025
When ARID1A is mutated, a microscopic chain of events analogous to a Rube Goldberg machine is set off in the cancer cell.
From Science Daily ● May 15, 2024
All those Rube Goldberg contraptions we used to make our marriages equal, like hiring a house cleaner, the nanny, and family who lives close by, were stripped away.
From Salon ● Feb. 20, 2024
A Republican senator from Pennsylvania called the Mercury capsule-Atlas rocket pairing “a Rube Goldberg device on top of a plumber’s nightmare.”
From "Hidden Figures" by Margot Lee Shetterly
So you are running too now, dodging and weaving past all the rubes who haven’t yet figured out the score.
From Slate ● Jun. 16, 2026
Patriotism—even in 1943—strikes Hart as strictly for the rubes; Rodgers counters that “Oklahoma!” is oblique reassurance of “what we’re fighting for.”
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 16, 2025
His denouement arrives when he accidentally tells his audience over a hot mic that they’re a bunch of witless, contemptible rubes; they turn on him and his popularity evaporates.
From Salon ● Feb. 19, 2024
Zaslav knows there are plenty of rubes just like me probably willing to pay.
From The Verge ● Aug. 27, 2022
Once again, a new batch is mixed up with trough water and set out moments before the rubes descend.
From "Water for Elephants" by Sara Gruen
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
